1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the art of vehicles.
More particularly, this invention relates to firefighting vehicles.
In a further and more specific aspect, the invention concerns a firefighting vehicles having a number of removable modules which are interchangeable for different applications.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The purpose of a firefighting vehicle, or fire truck, as it is more commonly called, is to transport firefighting equipment and personnel as quickly as possible from a fire station to the scene of a fire, often many miles away. Among the types of equipment which can be transported are tanks, pumps, hoses, ladders, communications devices, and rescue equipment. Over the years, as the science of firefighting has advanced, the equipment has become more and more specialized. The equipment needed for a chemical fire, for instance, would be very different from the equipment needed for a forest fire, and the equipment required for a high-rise apartment building would differ from that required for a vacant warehouse.
Just as fire equipment varies, so do the fire trucks which carry this equipment. Some firefighting companies may, in fact, own many different fire trucks, with each truck being reserved for a particular type of fire--one truck may be outfitted for situations involving toxic chemicals, another may be outfitted for rescue operations and so on. Smaller companies with limited budgets, on the other hand, are more likely to have just one or a few multi-purpose vehicles which can be used in any situation.
The multi-purpose types of vehicles may fall into one of two categories. One is a kind of "super truck", in which nearly all types of equipment are more or less permanently carried on the vehicle. This type of vehicle is generally quite expensive, heavy, and may be seen as wasteful, since it is inefficient to carry more equipment than necessary to any given fire. The other is a simpler type of truck in which only the most basic equipment such as pumps, tanks, hoses, and ladders are built-in or permanently carried, with some of the truck bed being empty. The rest of the equipment is normally stored separately in the fire station and only loaded onto the truck as needed. The main drawback with this type of truck is that much time may be wasted in searching for and loading the more specialized equipment when the occasion calls.
Another type of fire truck has been introduced, in which a single module is either slid on and off the truck bed as needed, or lifted on and off the bed with a crane. However, the single module lacks the versatility which is needed for fighting a large variety of different types of fires.